Thoughts on 'Life of Pi', read only if you've already read the book, your thoughts appreciated

What is it about Yann Martel's ‘Life of Pi’ that is so disturbing? I think my problem with it is that the story I had so loved for 300 pages I suddenly discovered is a lie. A fabrication. In 300 pages, the incredulous story about a young boy and a tiger coexisting on a lifeboat had become somehow plausible – I believed him and believed in the relationship. My heart went out to young Pi and his many ordeals. I loved Richard Parker. I craved more insights into their interaction. All the details fit so well – so like Kaiser Shozei from the Usual Suspects!

But if Pi's tiger story is indeed a fabrication, then our alternative is the reality. But for a boy to make up a story about his mother being murdered doesn’t fit either – that would not be a fabrication. Boys don’t make up stories about the mothers that they love being brutally murdered – for him to, in his imagination, put her to death in the sea would be more generous. I suppose I feel as if I’ve been tricked. I feel as if the wonderful characters I knew have died, along with young Pi himself who, though he lives, dies tragically in my heart as the not-as-resourceful, not-as-courageous Pi.

I also dislike the deeper implications of Pi's question about which story his interrogators prefer. Through Pi, the author seems to be trying to defend religion because it provides us with ‘a better story’ than just reason. As if the fabrication is better. Religion – presenting a way of life and a belief system and a measure and a justification for action – all of these important things it supposedly provides yet…it’s a fabrication. And the author is somehow saying that God the fabrication is better than reality, the result of ‘reason.’ My gut reaction is, we don’t like lies in the first place, so why would we enjoy such an elaborate one as religion? I haven’t enjoyed this feeling that the entire book was a lie… (not to mention that the resolution is a cop out -- a subtle appeal to madness). That does not satisfy me. Maybe in much the same way that the Bible does not satisfy me.

Or maybe the point is that we don’t know the answer. Either of Pi's stories could be true (but for the fabrication of his mother meeting a terrible death). God or no God could be true and we just don’t know, so we might as well believe in God (which is a fallacy). In religion as in Life of Pi, Reality (reason) is the more grim of the two stories. But if it is reality, then I think it more important, more significant.

Why? Why is reality better? Because reality is where we act; it's where our actions and reactions count. So our knowledge and thought processes must be grounded in reality in order to make good choices for our lives. But what is a good choice? If a good choice means one that maximizes happiness, then perhaps for some people maximizing the happiness of their souls is priority, regardless of reality. Delusional or not, they are happy and it was a good choice.

Does it mean that those of us without such elaborate stories to guide us are simply lost? If we are not tending to our souls then what should we be tending to? Maybe nothing. But if 'nothing' is in fact the reality, wouldn’t you rather know that than think otherwise?

My Cousin's Wedding

These are two photos of my cousin's wedding. The cake was beautiful and I like the pic of the flower girls.




I just finished 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel and found it disturbing and provocative but also...not the ending I had so hoped for. Alas... how I love Richard Parker.

Guy on the C-train, part II: Jump-roping Odyssey

I made the mistake of doing my (now) 1300 jumps in a different section of the park today -- in the more secluded basketball court where kids play, not big boys. There were two kids playing a seemingly innocent game. The little girl had a wandering eye and a unibrow and the bigger kid was chubby with cheek dimples. I guess they tired of playing basketball and wandered over to my section while i was on jump number 732. At first they were deeply impressed and I of course had no choice but to ignore them and jump faster so they'd think I was really really cool. Which they did.

After a while they started making some comments like 'i bet you can't do the spiderman' to which i have to answer in mid-jump, well what's the spiderman and apparently its this really really cool jump that only really really cool jumpropers can do and it involves throwing your rope over your head and then jumping over it while catching it before you or it hits the ground. So I of course had to bow my head and admit that, no, i can't do the spiderman, trying to hide my shame. The follow-up question is of course, well....what about the Matrix? Can you do the Matrix? (the Matrix being another one of these jumps that only really really cool jumpropers can do which involves actually coming to a complete halt in mid-air and making everything around you move backwards except for your rope with which you're going to do a double). And I, being only a mediocre, no-tricks kind of jumper, can do neither.

It was a painful experience. I'm sure that either one of them, if armed with a jump rope that 'tings' or maybe one with pink handles and streamers could out-Matrix me in a heartbeat. I had to give up some of my Starbursts to regain my cool, and I think now the universal order has been restored, though not without effort.

So after that ego-beating, I'm walking back from the park all sweaty. I see the mosaic guy again and he's still there with his tarp -- not evicted yet. Somewhere in between the mosaic guy and the guy in the suit with the pink tie, I notice a familiar face. Its the guy I met on the C-train the other day! The one that asked me for my number! He's shorter than I remember. And it looks like he may be holding hands with a stout, dark woman with a large bust in a black halter, but I will just have to be satisfied with knowing that I will never really know.

And THAT is precisely why I'm against this whole idea of relationships. You just never know whose number your significant other is asking for.

Guy on the C-train

I met this guy on the subway the other night as I was hurrying up to Central Park for the free Philharmonic concert on the Great Lawn (the concert ended tragically in a torrential downpour that sent thousands of brie-and-french-bread picnic-goers on a mass exodus from the park to take cover under the scaffolding that we usually so despise). Anyway, this guy took the free seat that had opened up in front of me and then noticed that I was standing there. He said, oh, do you want to sit down? and I said, no, I'm fine, and put my headphones on. And he says something but I can't hear him over the drone of Orgy, so I take my headphones off and hear him say, 'do you want to give me your number?' Smiling up at me like it ain't no big thang he's asking me this in the roaring silence of a crowded C-train.

My friend Josh has this misguided notion that my life is like Sex and the City because weird little subplots like this seem to happen all the time. But I think its more that I so savour the vignettes... like salt and pepper on the baked potato of life.

So anyway, I just laughed and put my headphones back on. And then I thought, you know, that was pretty gutsy, to just ask a girl for her number like that in such a nice way and with all these people watching even though she'd most definitely turn you down. And I thought, bravery should be rewarded. So I tore off a piece of the white crinkly paper that was holding MY french bread, wrote my number down, and blushing all over, handed it to him. Our fellow subway riders were watching in the way that we all watch in moments of boredom; those scraps of human-ness are just too good to pass up.

I notice that my salt-and-pepper has hazel eyes and find out that he is mixed like me, only his non-white part is Afghan. Interesting, and I wanted to tell him I had just been there, but that would have been a little lie, because I wasn't actually THERE, and would have to go into the whole story in front of all these people. I held my tongue. I'm learning to do that more often these days.

He hasn't called me and he probably won't. It was a good bit of flavor anyway.

And we meet Sodatsho...

It’s a Friday, the 2nd of June, and we are on our way to a small town near the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. I’m forcing myself to write about this because the memories are slowly leaving me.

What was it – that first memory of Kyrgyzstan – the Valley of Nomads? After the desolate land and hearts of China, we were given a gift of lush green and smiling border officials. I give the little girl standing there with her father in uniform a small bag from Thailand – it has an elephant on it, with sequins and she at first is apprehensive, not sure yet about the meaning of the thing – is it a gift? And is it for her? The truth dawns on her and she sprints towards the army camp where, doubtless, she has many equally giddy friends who, if we don’t get out of here soon, will want bags of their own. I can see a small group of seven year olds clustering around, and the girl with the elephant bag is pointing our way. They look on curiously, and then a bit hungrily. With border officials for fathers and me, with a limited supply of sequined elephants, I am anxious to move on.

When I first saw Sodatsho I thought he was a tourist, or a mugger. He was riding on the outside of a white Land rover, holding on to the side as the car slowed in front of us. He jumps off before the car comes to a halt and introduces himself as our guide. He’s a small man – but for his face, he would be almost elfin. He looks damningly Russian and has a week’s worth of stubble that stretches from the bottom of his sharp chin to the shallow edge of his cheekbones. He wears a striped white and black shirt that looks like its made of woven wool. Or burlap. He has a cap on, which is shading his eyes from the bright sun. I think it has words on it. Tour guides are not required to have depth, but the look in this one’s eyes tells a different story. I didn’t know it at the time, but our trip will begin and end with Sodatsho.

We are at the Irkeshtam pass, and as we have discerned after our seven and a half hours of trying to get across the border, they don’t see many tourists here. We’ve grown accustomed to the excessive border bureaucracy, and are really too tired to care at this point. Some of the officials in this office are inspecting us like vultures. Me in particular. They think I’m Tajik or Kirghiz, or Uzbek, and pretty, and are confused about why I don’t speak Russian. Even though a few of them are quite handsome in their pressed uniforms and burly bodies, their looks make me nervous. More ‘official’ business ensues – I imagine that means Sodatsho handing over many packs of cigarettes to the vulture guards and maybe explaining to them why I don’t speak Russian.

As we wind our way west of China, we’re leaving behind our frustration at the border. The Landrovers ascend in z’s up the side of the hill and the higher we get, the better we understand that we are in the middle of some breathtaking scenery – to our left a range of snow-capped mountains, to our right, more mountains, these with deeper imperfections. We’re at a much higher altitude than we thought, and its cold even in summer. It begins to snow.

At the base of the mountains on our right stretches a vast green valley. In the distance we see our first yurt – a circular tent made of camel wool. We are traveling through the Valley of Nomads and I see why, of all places a nomad could choose to live, he would choose this one.


to be continued....

New York II

On my way to the park this afternoon to jumprope (1100 times now!), I passed the old man that makes mosaics all over the East Village. He must have been here for years, maybe even decades. I remember seeing him years ago when I lived on 12th street, he used to sit quietly for hours and painstakingly glue pieces of broken plates and glasses and fruit bowls to government-standard public items. No St. Mark's space was safe; he gleefully attacked every lampost, planter, mailbox -- even designated squirrel homes were littered with multicolored broken remains. No doubt this added some pretty significant points to the charm factor of a regularly urine-scented street, but who knows if he was ever recognized for the sacrifice.

One morning when I walked by, he was sitting on the front stoop of his building, screaming. He had been evicted. Evicted from maybe the only home he has ever known. And he was screaming, long white hair streaming in the summer breeze, screaming. The rest of St. Marks was silent. No one quite knew what to do about our little mosaic artist who had been such an institution. And here, the street he had worked so hard to make beautiful was kicking him out.

I walked by, rubber-necking a bit at the wild man gesticulating across the street. In the following years I thought of him often. Did he ever make it back into his apartment? Did he fight the good fight, come out alive at the other end? Or did he unclimactically move his tattered couch down the five flights of steps to the ground level and find that there was nowhere else to go?

As I mentioned, I saw him again this morning. He's been living under this blue tarp in front of the Holyland Market on the corner of St. Marks and A. With homeless people its pretty hard to tell sometimes if they really are crazy or just down-trodden. In this case, it may be a little bit of both. He's been working so long with broken pieces maybe he just gradually became a piece of his own work.

Anyway, I think he got evicted again. Some young guys in boots were taking down the scaffolding that held up his tarp. I don't know where he can go now. He might actually have to leave 8th street, and it seems like that for him would be a fate worse than death. I wondered sometimes why he picked that spot, of all places. There's a couple planters right there and I'm thinking now that maybe one of them was his favorite of all time, and he just couldn't be without it.

Crapping in Central Asia

The most common Central Asian toilet is an outhouse. The outer structure is often made of wood planks nailed together around a centrally located hole in the ground, also covered with nailed wooden planks. This means that the incumbent will often be suspended several feet above the ground on the wooden platform depending on the determination of the local outhouse builder. Unlike East Asian toilets, there are no foot platforms – simply a hole and often an exceedingly narrow one, requiring nothing less than perfect aim. Due to the dry climate of the area, there is little or no water and certainly none to be used on flushing. However, the skin-cracking dryness also eliminates the diseases that one might find in a wet, humid climate so that just leaving a large collection of excrement in one place is not necessarily a public health disaster, though the scent is often stronger than one might hope to encounter on a daily, if not hourly basis.

Public toilets often have more than one hole, indicating that several people could attend to business at the same time with no qualms about privacy. This nonchalant attitude towards personal space pervaded most aspects of the culture and though different for us, was never offensive. People were not preoccupied with worries about what is ‘mine.’

The tricky thing to realize however, is that you can actually avoid the entire ordeal by simply going au naturale, as many people do. In the words of one wise bus driver, who pulled over on the side of the road on one long, desolate stretch of highway, 'we'd better stop here to piss because there's a town and a gas station coming up.'

The best of all possible worlds however, is one in which the amenities of a Western style toilet can be matched with the au naturale technique. On occasion this combination can actually produce some of the most striking views to date. One tall tale that has gone down in Central Asian history is of the man who, desperate with a bad stomach, went walking towards the river in search of relief. On one side of the river stood Tajikistan, and on the other, Afghanistan, that mysterious and untouched land. He had no hope of finding an appropriate place, but suddenly the sun shone through the clouds and its rays rested on two flat rocks at about knee height. A hole ran between them. The man knew at that moment, that there was a God, and he had smiled.

No one knows the true identity of the man in the tale, but a young Afghan goat herder across the river spotted him and knew of the man's glory. It is from this goat herder and the generations that have followed him that we glean this heart-warming story of triumph against all odds.

New York

The continuous dialogue in my head has been between New York and Thailand and deciding which one to be in. In New York, there is English. The English language is "home" (Pico Iyer). My deeper thoughts can be conveyed to whomever I may choose to reveal them to -- a novelty I have missed.

Thailand to me is a place of solitude, focus, and isolation. I can sit in a safe place and read for hours and never feel a need to speak. But often the craving for an outlet eats at me -- the expression of concepts too abstract for me to speak in Thai and too complicated for me to paint. For my mind, it is harder to be there -- the moments of distraction as obvious as streaks of red paint on white paper. I am unable to escape my own weaknesses and so, push on, trying to reel in my own attention.

Time in New York is spent trying to reel in the even momentary attention of others. Maybe its a city-wide affliction -- we are all perpetually sizing one another up. As a good friend mentioned, New Yorkers are constantly forced to choose one option from an infinite palate of where to eat, what to do, what to wear, who to talk to, who to drink with, and even, who to have sex with. New York is a tease -- its erratic ego-stroking parallels the affections of an abusive husband. And this is just one of many possible addictions one could choose to indulge.

In New York, my ego is very awake and inconsistently pleased with itself. It always craves more.

The practical choice is to return to Thailand and finish what I've started. The sexy choice is of course, to stay here, give up, and allow the cheap thrills of America to keep me on the brink of happiness but never quite in it.

Central Asia

I recently traveled through Central Asia with my Dad, brother and a family friend. It was by far one of the best adventures I have ever embarked on and I recommend it to any of you hardy travel buffs (keep it our little secret though...). We flew to Urumqi and then to Kashgar, both historical Silk Road cities in northwestern China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. From Kashgar, we drove for two weeks through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan... and some of the most dramatic scenery I have ever seen -- from a lush valley of nomads, to crystal clear, turquoise-colored mineral lakes, snow-capped mountains and emerald-green farmland, to desolate, other-worldly 'desert' (for lack of a better word).

Fun facts about Central Asia:

- Al Khorezmi, a mathematician who lived around 800 AD, invented a familiar thing called the 'algorithm', which took his name. He also invented a little thing called 'Al-Jebr', which we know today as 'algebra.'

- Approximately 1% of the population of Kyrgyzstan is still nomadic and they live in yurts made of poplar wood and woven camel hair. To us, a yurt looked like it would take about a hundred years to pitch, but in fact, it takes four people (correction, four nomads) one hour to construct.

- Lemon Barf Detergent is a (if not the) best-selling detergent in Central Asia.

- A typical Kirghiz dowry consists of at least one yak. A marriage proposal involves first kidnapping one's future wife, and asking for permission from her parents later.

- Chinese border officials at the crossing between China and Kyrgyzstan take four-hour lunch breaks and the only transportation for passengers through the 8 kilometer buffer zone is a forklift. Travelers beware.

- Central Asians bake great bagels.

- Some yaks have natural highlights.

- Uzbekistan is one of two most landlocked countries in the world. You have to travel through at least two countries to get to the ocean. (Lichtenstein is the other).

- Tajik farmers cut off the ears of their dogs so that as puppies, wolves can't drag them away by the ears.

- It seems that most Central Asians appreciate George Bush for bringing down the Taliban.

- Judging from the terrain of Afghanistan (which we saw from across the river for about four days), we will never find Osama.

- It seems that most Central Asians look back on their time as part of the USSR with nostalgia -- a time when everyone had jobs, education, and stability. People still love Lenin.

- Central Asian hospitality is hard to beat.